Kelly and I did our second annual "Thanksgiving Day Practice" with our Bible Study group. This means a dinner for about 30 plus people at our house. It is alot of work but is also alot of fun.

This is our backyard before the event, you can see our patio cover Kelly and I built turned out well, at least until the first big winds hit, then I would recommend NOT standing under it.

We put one of the guys in our group in charge of Decorations. Give a man a chance to decorate and you don't get fancy decor, elegant centerpieces, or other sorts of things that add class to a dinner, instead you get a 7 foot tall blow up turkey! Oh YEAH!

We just ate the Dickson's turkey and suprisingly are still smiling!

Well we are smiling because we actually threw our turkey away!

And we're smiling because we are not the suckers sitting outside in the cold!

Our Tuesday night Bible study group decided to celebrate Halloween a day early. WE all carved pumpkins and Kelly looks for any chance she can get to dress up.
Dude, you haven't even carved anything yet!

Man, that costume most be hot! Got to get air to the pits!

There are a few great pieces of art in the world; pieces like the Mona Lisa, the David statue, Sistine Chapel, and Dustin's pumpkin.

My pumpkin is the good one (just pick your favorite and I will take credit for it, what do you know? You weren't there.)

I bet you did not know a giraffe could be so freaking good looking!

Well, Kelly and I thought we had lost our camera. Turns out my parents have it but we have not not had a chance to take pictures since the Family reunion in August. However, Kelly's sister has been scanning old pictures so I figured I would put some of those up instead since they are adorable! When looking at this you have to wonder... does Kelly come from some sort of Asian descent?
Kelly was (is) such a good swimmer, that she like to give the other girls head starts.

Now that is a face we can finally recognize (notice awkward sister in background)

Apparently, the smallest swimsuit ever made was still a little big in the back side.

Here are some more:
These backpacks are DANGEROUS. Just ask Derrick about how good of capapults they can be.

Is it just me or does she look like she has no idea what is going on and is wondering why she is wearing that silly hat?

No, that is not a blond haired boy hanging out with Jamie. THat is my dark haired, green eyed wife. HOT!

So... ahhh... was this a drowing competition?

Now that is a good one.

Well, Kelly and I spent my part of my birthday weekend building a pergola (patio cover) in our backyard. Actually, the materials for it was a present from my father in law. Wasnt that nice of him giving me a present that create a full few days worth of work for me! Just kidding. It was something we have wanted to do since we had to remove our trees and lost all shade in our backyard (Lauren was not happy about that). We also recently finished painting the rest of our house. Well, not finished, as we have to do touch up and paint the eaves, but the beige is all new. Our yard is starting to come together. The pergola is not finised yet but it is a good start.

Lauren is far from cameras shy as you can see and she is excited about finally having some shade for the rest of the summer. She was so excited and could not contain herself so she went and got her stuffed animal and ran all over the place.

Like the bonehead I am I forgot my camera. I guess when i was fumbling around at 6 AM to go I did not think of it. However it was a great day. We went hard from about 8:30 in the morning to 6:30 at night. We did stop twice for about 15 minutes. Needless to say i was tired. The highlight was sitting on a tiny ledge about 3 feet long and it stuck out from the side of the rock about two feet on a downward sloping angle. That little space for two guys about 250-300 ft in the air. I leaned over and it was literally straight down. It was quite the experience!

Titled: "TRAD CLIMBING 101"

Hey all, just wanted to drop a post letting everyone know of my day coming up. On Friday a friend and I are going to be taking the day off work and headed to this place call Tahquitz. It is about a 500 ft rock on the side of a mountain. The style of climbing that we will be doing is called Trad (short for traditional). Normally there are things bolted into the rocks however in Trad climbing there is nothing and you bring gear to stick on the cracks in the wall and that attach to your rope and that is what keeps you from falling. My friend is a good climber and knows what he is doing which is good because I have never done Trad climbing myself so it will be an adventure. The rock is about 4 or 5 pitches, depending on where you are going up. A "pitch" is where a guy climbs up a certain distance while he is being belayed by a guy on the ground, then he anchors in and belays for the guy below him to catch up. That would be one pitch. You do that all the way up the rock. The most dangerous part is called the "lead". Understandibly, it is the one going first and "leading" the second. It is dangerous mainly because the "lead" has to climb above the last anchor that was placed, so if they fall, they not only fall back to the last anchor, the fall the actually twice the distance. I wont be leading so if I fall, the belay will keep me tight so I wont really go anywhere. A big fall would be if somone is say 15 ft above their last anchor and so if they fall they fall the 15 feet down to the anchor and then since they were 15 above it they still have another 15 feet of rope, so they fall a total of 30 feet before the rope catches them. Here is an example of what I am talking about: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhwDkVmvjC8 so a 30 ft fall a couple hundred feet above the ground is quite the rush.

Dont worry, it seems crazy but is actually pretty safe if everything is done properly. I will try to bring my camera and get some pictures. It will be a fun day.

Oh, and I forgot to mention one quick thing from the baseball game. During one of the innings the big screen in left field was showing a bunch of fans as they always do. I looked up and noticed an incredibly beautiful woman was being shown on the screen all by herself. I thought, "Man, if I weren't married I would like to meet that girl..." then suddenly I noticed the girl looked awfully familiar. Wait a second! This is the girl next to me.
Yes, Kelly made the big screen cut. Apparently the rest of us weren't good looking enough to be put on the screen. Can't blame them though.

One of my good friends from Westmont, Kevin, is a in law school and is an intern in at a law firm that has great Dodger tickets. Kevin invited Kelly and I to come watch a game. It was hot but the Dodgers won 9-3 so that made it not so bad. The seats were great. We were about 13 rows deep directly behind the Dodger's dugout. I took a few pictures to show where we were sitting.


Here is one last picture from the 4th. Kelly in the white, and to no surprise is making a face at the camera.

As some of you may remember from our posts last year, the 4th of July is quite the experience in my neighborhood. Kelly and I hosted a party and picniced out front where we lit our own fireworks and then watched the city's fireworks show. Earlier in the day, Kelly and I, plus two of our friends, rode bikes down to the beach. It was quite the chaotic experience. The pennisula in Newport Beach eventually shuts down and does not allow cars in or out. Basically, it turns into a huge party. We left before it got too crazy though to head back to our house.

Kelly and I are lucky enough to be able to go to Hawaii once a year with her family. What a blessing. Here are some pictures from this year's trip.

The wind really gets going in Hawaii!!!!!!

Kelly got a massage at the Spa Moana which is probably her favorite place on earth. After your massage you get to go relax in a room that over looks the ocean. She decided to capture it on film.

In Hawaii you dont always eat healthy (notice the 3 bags of chips in my hands)!

Strange... a palm tree in Hawaii????!!!!!!

Kelly and her family on the boat that took us to our snorkel locations.

Here are some more fun pictures from our trip to Hawaii early this month.


Kelly at Makenna Beach

A boat off the shore of our Hotel

This was our snorkel trip to Molokini which is a crater a few miles off the shore of Maui

GO BRUINS ! I mean, isnt this bay beautiful?

Honolua Bay just without Kelly and I standing infront of it.

Here are some pictures from the Mud Run Kelly and I did with some friends at Camp Pendleton in San Diego. It was a 10k run (6.2 miles) through the hills of the base. We there was about 2 miles that all went uphill, multiple obstacles, mud pits. You even run through a "lake" that is about 5 feet deep, but that was nice as it was hot and it helped to rinse off the mud. Most of the mud pits were around 5 ft tall walls that you jumped over. The very last mud pit has a bunch of ropes about a foot off the top of the mud and you have to get down in it and crawl. Kelly and I had a blast believe it or not and are thinking of doing it again in October, anyone want to join us?

These pictures dont do justice to how dirty you get. We waited at the finish line for our friends who where about 45 minutes after us.

Here are some pictures of a great experience Kelly and I got to have last week. A group from World Vision, one of the largest international relief organzitions came to our church. With it came two women from Malawi. Malawi is the country that our church supports through child sponsorship. We have sponsored over 800 kids from a specific town in Malawi and that is why these two women came to visit. Ethel, the one with glasses, works for World Vision. She is quite the impressive lady. She has a masters from a school in Europe and gets to travel with World Vision. However, like everyone in her country, her life has been stricken by Aids. Both her parents are gone, and her sister and brother-in-law died from the virus. Ethel now cares for her niece and nephew. Her job even brought her to a UN conference as a representative from her country. Olipa has a rough story and is here in the U.S. for the first time to share it. Olipa was raped multiple times by the same man. She had two kids as a result of these rapings. When her youngest child was found to be anemic, she wanted to donate blood and was told that she could not because she was carrying the HIV virus as was her daughter (her son fortunately was not infected). HIV patients can be cast aside as it is a disease that people in Malawi don't understand. Some people think the way to get rid of HIV is to have sex with a virgin (probably what happened to Olipa) others think it is a form of warfare from Western society and believe that we put HIV in condoms. Pretty sad, huh. Olipa did challenge her church to educate themselves about HIV and care for those who are infected by it pointing out that Jesus looked out for the sick, not the healthy. She is a pretty brave 24 year old woman.

We had the privelege of hosting these two ladies at our house. I cooked dinner which totally shocked them to see a man working in the kitchen. The next day, Kelly had the chance to take two ladies from an underdeveloped and proverty-stricken nation to Disneyland. She knew she was in for an interesting day when at breakfast they asked where the village was in Southern California and panicked when Kelly merged onto the busiest road (Orange County Freeways) they had ever seen in their lives.

Disneyland was a wonderful day filled with surprised, lots of laughs and a lot of fun. We greatly enjoyed the experience of having 2 Malwian women share a day with us!

All day long they kept asking Kelly: "is this real?" Kelly kept telling them "no". When Olipa (in the blue dress) saw Mickey walking around she asked Kelly if Mickey was "computer generated."


The girls really wanted Kelly to get some pictures of the tram, because they thought it looked like a snake.
All in all, they had quite the experience as did Kelly and her friends. The two girls did everything, and loved every moment. Kelly finished off the day by taking them to the gift shop as the girls racked up a $200 bill in gifts for their kids and family. But in this once in a life opportunity, can anyone say no?